Gov. Gretchen Whitmer says she doesn’t want to raise the gas tax. But after considering other options, she thinks it’s the most viable way to raise the revenues needed to fix Michigan roads.

“After 40 years of disinvestment in infrastructure, we have to fix the problem,” and that means finding a way to generate $2.5 billion a year, Whitmer said Wednesday during an MLive Citizen Roundtable. Three panelists joined the governor at MLive’s Grand Rapids office to discuss the $60.2 billion budget proposal she unveiled this week.

That $2.5 billion price tag means “there are not many parts of our current tax code where you can make adjustments and raise that kind of revenue,” Whitmer said. “Our budget director laid out what other options might look like. None of them were more palatable than a user fee such as gas or diesel tax.”

To put $2.5 billion in perspective: The state’s General Fund is a little over $10 billion.

The number is large enough that it rules out solutions such as tapping the new revenue generated by the marijuana tax, using the Lottery money or creating toll roads.

“The marijuana tax could raise a decent amount of money, but we probably talking $150 million and our problem with roads is $2.5 billion,” Whitmer said.

Lottery revenues? The lottery money already "goes into education, and education in Michigan is woefully underfunded as it is,” Whitmer said.

The Michigan Lottery generated $941 million in fiscal 2018, about 7.5 of revenues for state’s School Aid Fund.

The Ohio Turnpike generated $329 million in 2017, but Whitmer noted that Michigan is at a disadvantage when it comes to toll roads because of geography. Since Michigan is a peninsula, “people don’t cut through Michigan the way they cut through Ohio and Pennsylvania and Illinois,” she said. “So tolls are more complicated for us because we’re a destination state.”

She also pointed out the Ohio governor recently proposed a 18-cent hike in their gas tax, even with the turnpike revenue and roads that are “a lot better” than Michigan’s.

Still, Whitmer said, “tolls roads is something that we might have a conversation about, especially when it comes to bridges. That conversation is happening now."

A 45-cent hike in the gas tax is essentially dead on arrival in the Michigan House, House Speaker Lee Chatfield told reporters Thursday.

“Unfortunately, the proposal that she put forward is a nonstarter for my caucus, because the people in our districts cannot afford it,” he said. “So the gas tax will not be raised 45 cents.”

Currently, gas sold in Michigan is subject to a 6 percent sales tax that’s directed towards state school aid and local governments. Chatfield, R-Levering, said he favors an approach that directs “every penny that’s paid at the pump to our roads."

The most important thing, Whitmer said, is to figure out a solution sooner than later.

“We’ve had a series of politicians who didn’t want to fix it or weren’t honest about the magnitude of it or were incapable of getting it done,” she said. “We have to do it before it gets so bad that it’s unfixable. Every day we don’t, it deteriorates further.”

One reason Michigan is facing a crisis now over road funding is that “other states have built in inflationary measures. We did not," she said. "So while the cost of everything has climbed, our ability to pay has not increased.”

“The national standard for what roads should be is that 90 percent of roads should be in fair or good condition,” Whitmer said "Right now we’re at 78 percent and it’s not like a status quo question, where if you do nothing, it will stay that way. It’s deteriorating.

“If we do nothing, it will be down to 65 percent in just two years and 60 percent one year later, so this is precipitous. So we don’t address it with this particular fuel tax or get $2.5 billion to put into it, it may get so expensive and so dangerous that we may never recover from it.”